Proposal 23, Football Districts In Illinois, Will It Pass?

(12-6-18) – Illinois High School Association (IHSA) member schools are in the process on voting for a possible change in football that would impact the state, if passed, for many years to come in the future.

Proposal 23 would end conference play and incorporate district play starting in 2021, 8 schools would be assigned to each district and 7 district games would be played, the 1st two weeks of the season would allow schools to schedule teams they prefer.

Former DeKalb AD and now the AD at Normal Community Nic Kearfott, in the same Pantagraph story, is in favor of the plan.

“Conferences are breaking up, separating … dominoes keep falling year after year due basically to this. Everybody is looking for the five or six wins.”

Kearfoot speaks from his past experience at DeKalb, the Barbs recently landed in the DuPage Valley Conference after the conference they were in blew-up and were turned down by several other conferences before the DVC.

“We don’t have to worry about scheduling non-conference games,. It makes it nice. We like where we’re headed with our conference.”

The school is a member of the 10-team Illini Prairie Conference, which has no scheduling issues with all 9 games being conference games.

The last day to vote for member schools is on December 17th (including other proposals), with the finalresults being released on December 18th.

There are many different factors (public vs private, travel, losing conference rival games, etc) of why a school might be for or against the proposal, but the deciding factor could be the voting process.

Demographics have a lot to do with this proposal. The haves will vote against it , and the have not’s will vote for it . Since School districts have split towns in many pieces . Unfortunately money is in play in this scenario, sad that it has filtered into high school athletics.